Local officials plead for protection

NIKKI BUSKEYStaff Writer

Saturday

Aug 23, 2008 at 8:00 AM

HOUMA – Local officials pleaded for federal help moving along levee and land-building projects at a public meeting of the Mississippi River Commission, held aboard a riverboat docked at a Dularge pier.

The commission, created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, ended a two week annual inspection of the Mississippi that began in St. Paul, Miss., and ended in the Houma area.

The commission, which counts local civil engineer William Clifford Smith of T. Baker Smith, Inc. among its members, is tasked with advising Congress and the federal administration on navigation, commerce and environmental issues facing the Mississippi River basin.

At the top of the list of local concerns was lack of flood protection that faces Terrebonne Parish.

Interim regional levee director Windell Curole called Houma “the heart of the energy industry” and questioned why its needs are not being better met.

“Our coastal community is one of the only communities retreating from the coast,” Curole said. “But we have more right to be here. We’re shipbuilders. We support the offshore energy industry.”

Gilbert Talbot of the Terrebonne levee board pointed out that the parish boasts major offshore wells, as well as networks of hundreds of pipelines crisscrossing the parish.

Port Fourchon services 90 percent of the Gulf deepwater oil platforms, and LOOP, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port handles 15 percent of all imported oil and puts out about 1.5 billion barrels of oil a day.

State Sen. Reggie Dupre, D-Bourg, asked the corps to partner with local officials in their quest for hurricane protection rather than being a source of obstacles.

“If Hurricane Katrina had drifted west and put this area out of business, they predicted there would be a $2 spike in gas price for a long time,” Dupre said. “Not to mention all the people who would come home to no work.”

On the verge of what looks like an economic recession, could Americans afford $6 gasoline? Dupre asked.

Dupre cited the rising cost of Morganza-to-the-Gulf, Terrebonne’s proposed hurricane-protection system, as one of the challenges it needs help mounting.

“The cost started at $900 million and now we’ve heard numbers as high as $10 billion,” Dupre said. “We’re not stupid, we know that won’t meet the federal cost-benefit ratio.”

With the state’s help, Dupre said, Terrebonne has finally gotten together enough money to try to get downscaled, 10-foot levees along the Morganza alignment on the ground, and the senator asked the corps to help speed up the permitting process for those levees.

Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet also asked that $30 million passed down from the federal government over two years ago to help bolster parish drainage levees in communities like Dularge, Dulac and Chauvin be put to immediate use.

“Please expedite the process or transfer the money into our hands so we can expedite it,” Claudet said.

The corps is still in the process of completing final levee designs for that project.

“There’s a general public outcry about a lack of cooperation from the corps,” said state Rep. Damon Baldone, D-Houma.

Finally, local officials also requested the committee’s support for a project that would pipe unneeded river sediment from the rich Atchafalaya Basin near Morgan City into sediment-starved marshes of Terrebonne.

The clogged river basin has experienced backwater flooding this year because they’re literally “smothering” in sediment, said Raymond Wade, president of the Port of Morgan City’s governing board.

Claudet, Morgan City Mayor Tim Mott and local lawmakers have teamed up to propose building a 21-mile pipeline that would send Morgan City sediment into wetlands surrounding Bayou Decade.

However, the project was passed over when the governor announced the division of $300 million in surplus money for coastal-restoration projects last week.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we should take that sediment and pipe it where they need it, just 30 miles away,” Dupre said.

“We’re not putting all our eggs in one basket,” he added. “These projects will work like pieces of a puzzle to ensure that we do not have water in our court house and major medical centers next time a storm comes.”

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